My Evil

I would love to blame it on my technological frustrations, but it is my evil that caused the problems all the same. A project needed to be finished by today. It required installing a media software package on my computer, editing video clips, and burning the finished product on DVD. Every one of the steps went wrong, Murphy’s Law wrong. I won’t go into the messy details. It would only serve to raise my blood pressure and bore you. Let’s just say it was a late night.
My husband, being the amazing man he is, stayed up with me. When something else would go wrong and my tears flowed and my voice raised and my body tensed, he would cradle me in his arms, kiss my temple, listen to me vent, and pray for me. He lifted the lid of the pot and turned the temperature down a notch when the spaghetti sauce began to leak over the sides. The pressure and heat and steam released, and the sauce settled. But still, my evilness simmered. It simmered, working its flavor through every limb and sinew of me like the Pharisees’ yeast.
The first two burnings of the DVDs gone kaput, we left the third one going while we crawled into bed. Chris held me and cuddled until I had settled down. This morning, he told me I am beautiful. All I see is the marring and burn marks from my evil. I went out to check the DVD. Something had burned! I held my breath and put the disc in the DVD player. Something had burned, but it wasn’t a correct burning. I was at my wits-end. No, I had lost them somewhere around 2:30 this morning. Chris and I returned to my computer to examine this new problem. I cried again. My evil, which had simmered and taken hold of the entire sauce, now boiled full over, now reached its zenith. I grabbed the nearest remote and hurled it across the room. I smote it, as would read in my translation of The Illiad, and it lay in three pieces. The spaghetti sauce covered the stove and the walls and the floor. It messied all the clean dishes and bowl of fruit.
Where is my Christian trust? Where is my patience and endurance and goodness? Lost over a computer? While others suffer hunger and imprisonment and beatings, it only takes a computer gone awry for me.

Side note: my husband calmly restored the remote, working his technological healing powers. He still loves me for reasons I cannot understand. Maybe its not for reasons as in qualities, but for reason as in commitment.